


the birds (looking back is for)

by renquise



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 07:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17844959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: Shaun remembered the first time he held a hawk.





	the birds (looking back is for)

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god, this was just supposed to indulge my weakness for wingfic, and then my shaun gilmore feelings took over. whoops? (ft. a subtle bird motif. super subtle.)

1.

Shaun remembered the first time he held a hawk. 

A traveling salesman had come through town on his way to Ank’Harel, stopping briefly to barter for water in their village. 

His wares were far too fine for them to afford, but the man had showed them off anyways, perhaps flattered by the rapt excitement of this little town at every wonder he pulled out of his caravan: fine silks, magical wares, furs from far lands. The man unveiled his wares with the flourish of an actor, and Shaun wanted to know where he had been, where he was going, what lay beyond the reaches of the dunes.

A fine hunting hawk was one of the last the merchant brought out, no doubt destined for a rich noble in Ank’Harel. He brought it forth on his gloved hand, its razored talons digging into the leather. The hawk spread its wings, the pattern of black and white dazzling against the clear sky.

“Fierce and loyal, this young one, longing for someone to serve and to come back to,” the merchant proclaimed with a wave. “Yet gentle—come, child, step forward.” 

Shaun stepped forward after a push from his mother. The merchant brought forth another glove and slipped it on his hand. It was loose around his fingers, the inside of it slightly damp with sweat. Shaun held still. The merchant took his hand and passed the falcon onto his fist, holding his hand steady as the crowd gasped.

Shaun could scarcely breathe. The leather-blunted edges of the dark talons dug into his hand as the hawk shifted its weight. Its feet were scaly, like the lizards that crawled between the steps to his house, but its feathers were cloud-like and fluffy around its legs, then sleek and precise along its wings. Its beak was the deep yellow of a ripe lemon. 

Shaun had never seen anything so deadly and lovely. Holding it on his fist felt like the first time he had caused an object to burst with light by laying his hands on it.

“Who will you sell him to?” Shaun whispered. “He must be very expensive.”

The merchant’s salesman smile softened as he looked at the fierce animal on his fist. Its head twisted, its keen yellow eyes flicking to the surrounding town, then back to the merchant. 

“A secret, young sir: I don’t believe I can bear to sell him. He belongs to himself, and I will release him back to the desert when we have had our time together.”

“That seems like a bad business model.”

The merchant laughed. “You’re a keen one. Perhaps. Perhaps he is too fine for a humble merchant like me, as well.” 

“I think you’re very interesting. He must like you, if he stays with you,” Shaun said. The merchant’s clothes were brightly embroidered, and he wore rings upon his fingers that flashed in the sun, and Shaun thought that he would very much like to look like that.

“Perhaps! I count myself a lucky man to have his company, however briefly. Now, here—”

The merchant brought his fist up, and the hawk sailed into the sky, quick and lovely. It rose on the hot air, its patterned wings blurring, and Shaun cried out, a pit dropping in his stomach at its receding shape, fearing that it might not come back. 

It wheeled and wheeled in the expanse of the blue sky. Dipped, disappeared into the blinding glare of the sun—and swooped back to the merchant’s fist. His rings flashed bright in the sun as he gestured to the hawk, proud and showmanlike: behold.

That evening, Shaun concentrated and shaped the hot air around his fingers into illusory rings, bright and warm in the dark of his room. Thought of far places far beyond the wing-touched horizon.

 

2\. 

The first years in Emon were lonely. Shaun worked hard, failed in some things, succeeded in others, wrote his parents not as dutifully as he should. He would have liked to say that he did not miss Marquet, not particularly, everything too different and too busy to have time to miss the radiant heat or the brightness of the blue desert sky. 

But it crept up on him sometimes when he was up before sunrise, opening the shutters of his shop. The morning birdsong was still strange and different, an unfamiliar chorus in the trees and under the eaves. He stretched, cracking his back, and wondered (again) if it would be worth the risk of investing in coffee bean imports, if only to have a properly strong cup in the morning. 

Eventually, he hired Sherri when he realized that he needed another pair of hands. She was surprisingly familiar with the birds that flitted around his eaves, taught him their names, and Shaun grew familiar with the subtleties of the birds’ barred wings, their comings and goings with the seasons. 

It didn't feel like home yet, but it could.

Years later, Vax ducked into his shop and made awkward jokes while attempting (badly) to haggle for a dagger. He was hollow-boned and sharp and loving and lovely, and he was bound to alight only briefly on Shaun’s outstretched hand. 

It was unwise, perhaps, but Shaun allowed himself to hope, even to yearn a bit. He did not want to be a fool in the desert with his arm outstretched, waiting endlessly for a bird long flown, but to miss out on beautiful, worthwhile things for fear of looking foolish, for fear of pain, would be a far greater loss. If that made him a fool, so be it. There was a wide blue sky for the taking.

 

3\. 

As the world fell apart, he thought, irrationally, of the birds under the eaves of his shop. Where would they go for shelter now? The dragons had destroyed everything for miles around. There were no trees left in Emon. In the dark of the cellar, all he could hear was the children, the low murmur of the empress keeping them quiet. His own breath. 

He was very cold. It wasn’t pleasant. He always thought the winters in Emon were cold, but he didn’t remember this kind of chill. It could be the blood loss.

He should have known that birds always come home to roost, he thought giddily when he woke to Vax bent over him. Vox Machina, stubborn and daring as always. Vax’s dark clothes blended into the dark, and he seemed unsubstantial, somehow. He wanted to reach for Vax’s face, to make sure he was still whole, but Vax caught his hand before he was able to reach. 

As they made their way through the ruins of the city, the starlings wove and dipped against the dusk sky as always. Shaun had heard that fortune-tellers in Emon sometimes read the future in their flight, reading the shapes as the flock converged and flowed and moved. He was sure that there was no true magic to it, and yet he found himself looking to the sky for a sign as they ducked into the tunnels.

 

4\. 

Shaun was tired, but he was always tired when he passed the threads of the Whitestone barrier threads off to Allura. Allura had looked like she felt very much the same, Kima frowning at her even as she took the spell from his hands. Shaun had been loath to hand it off to her, but she had insisted, and Shaun knew better than to doom an entire city by overestimating his capabilities. Shaun recognized the way she now moved a little gingerly, as though their very bones had grown more fragile, the marrow drained of arcane energies. 

Tonight, he had even resorted to reading by candlelight, rather than simply setting something alight with a touch. Truly, a sad state of affairs.

The dim light caught movement out the window, in the corner of his eye. Shaun felt panic close his throat as he grasped frantically at the scant magic remaining in his veins. But—no, he recognized the shape of wings, and Vax alighting on his doorstep.

“You gave me a fright,” Shaun said reproachfully, opening the door and shaking out his hand, letting the scraped-together embers of his magic retreat from the surface of his skin.

“Shaun! Um. Sorry about that,” Vax said, after a moment, offering an awkward wave. “Uh. Can I come in?”

Shaun never could deny him, even if he wasn’t tired and aching for pleasant company.

“Of course. Or, wait a moment, let me make sure you’re not going to knock over anything with your truly absurd wingspan.”

He cleared away anything that could end badly if knocked over. There wasn’t much: his rooms in Whitestone still felt strangely minimal, free of the comfortable clutter that had spread through his rooms and his shop in Emon: projects, papers, knick knacks that had caught his eye. Here, his rooms still felt spare. 

But perhaps the space had become filled with people, instead. Allura and her quick mind and precision, the camaraderie of the late nights spent with her and Kima going over the details of the shield. Cassandra and her quiet dignity, the glancing flashes of her youth in her bearing. Jarrett and his easy wit, always willing to share a drink and slip into the comfort of Marquetian on his tongue. Sherri, steady and loyal and capable. 

And always Vox Machina, ducking in and rushing back out into the mouth of danger. 

Vax ducked inside, his wings mantled at his back. The previous time Shaun had seen the wings, they were spread over a wide cliff, the mountains rising up in the distance at the closing of the day. Here, in this room, the feathers filled the space, dark and sleek, curving around them like a cocoon. When Vax carefully half-raised a wing to resettle it against his back, the light of the candles glanced through the vane of the feathers, turning the edges to soft gold.

Vax looked at him, his dark eyes darting to his face. 

“Keyleth—Keyleth sent me to you,” he said in a rush. “Gods, she's amazing, you know that? You should have seen her spells today. Fucking incredible.”

“She’s a hell of a lady,” Shaun offered. It was true.

“I know, right? I don't know how I got this lucky.” Vax bit his lip, blinking quickly. “But you, you too.” 

Shaun was ready to pass that off with an easy acquiescence: yes, of course, Glorious Gilmore, as always. But Vax opened and closed his mouth, his feathers bristling as though reaching for something, a warm current of air to send him aloft, and Shaun didn’t dare interrupt. Vax passed his hand over his hair, the loose strands falling back over his face. Shaun wanted to reach out to smooth them back.

"You're both amazing, and I love you both. And I’m afraid of fucking this up. But I don’t want to regret not asking. I don't know if you think I'm worth the trouble. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't think so," Vax said with a wry slant to his mouth. "You’re probably tired, keeping the barrier up all that time. Probably tired of me yanking you around, too.” 

“Vax,” Shaun said, and then said no more. All the words that usually came so easily to him fell away from his tongue.

“And—and, I don't know,” Vax stumbled to a stop, finally meeting his eyes. “I know I want to kiss you.”

Shaun found some of his words at last. “For someone who is supposed to be busy figuring out how to kill dragons, you seem to have spent a lot of time mooning over how good Keyleth and I look.”

“Yeah, well, I mean, you’ve got to distract yourself from impending death by dragon somehow,” Vax laughed, a nervous, stumbling thing that tumbled from his mouth. 

He was giddy with nerves, they both were. But Shaun couldn't bring himself to think that this was a bad idea.

Shaun stretched out his hands. 

A breath, two, and Vax fell into his touch, arms clasped around him, his sharp nose pressed into Shaun's neck. He fit so well in his arms. Shaun stroked down the grain of the feathers, smooth as water and springy under his hands. 

Vax let go of an inelegant throaty grunt and shivered under Shaun's hands, his eyes wide. The feathers on his wings fluffed out like a bird in winter, and Shaun was utterly charmed.

“I. Well, okay, I didn’t know they did that.”

“Are they sensitive?”

“Well. I mean, I usually don’t take them out just for funsies. I don’t really touch them. I mean, Vex helped me pick some branches out of them when I crash-landed in a tree, but that’s different. Maybe they are.” He paused. “Um. Do you want to help me find out?”

Shaun buried his fingers in the fine down where the wings flowed into Vax's lithe back, strange and beautiful, a rush of heat settling in his belly when Vax arched into his hands, shuddering. 

“Gladly.” Shaun meant it to sound flirty. The words came out his mouth far softer.

Vax made an incoherent noise and pushed him back into an overstuffed armchair to perch on him, a slight weight for all his wiry muscle. He was very warm and very alive, and his mouth was a joy.

Shaun had left behind many homes already to ambition and dragons and life circumstances, and Vax had done the same. It wouldn’t be the last home they would leave. But here, now, wings curved around them, not the wide blue sky of possibility, but a smaller space, however temporary: the size of a nest, the size of a heart.

 

5.

Vox Machina found Shaun again, after everything, and Keyleth pressed snowdrops into his hands and clasped him tight, her strong, lanky form taut with grief, and he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, not for a long moment, not for a long time.

But when he opened shop in Emon, the birds came to the eaves of his shop, as always: bristling feathers and delicate feet and bright eyes and smooth beaks, their chirping calls rising and falling on the wind. 

They sung the door open in the mornings, greeted Allura when she came over for wine and conversation, scattered in a flight of feathers when the ever-increasing De Rolos tumbled into his yard on bear-back, settled on Keyleth’s horns when she ducked through the door. They wheeled and wheeled in the sky and came back to roost.

There were always birds. There would always be birds.


End file.
